Note: The 2009 sales included 3,240 “season tickets for kids” priced at $5 per game. This year’s include a similar amount, though the exact figure was not available.

A public relations firm based in La Mesa has been making about 350 telemarketing calls per day, four days a week, for the past two months.

Their mission -- to drum up season ticket sales for San Diego State.

Results so far aren’t great. The most recent reported paid football season ticket sales are 9,524, as of Wednesday, down from 9,668 last year, and the lowest since at least 2001, the oldest year The San Diego Union-Tribune has on record. This year’s and last year’s number both include about 3,200 season “tickets for kids” priced at $5 per game.

“The fruits of the labor will show up once there’s success on the field,” SDSU Athletic Director Jim Sterk said. “If the team shows promise, then I think all the things we’re doing -- the advertising, the calling, e-mails -- that will pay dividends down the road. It won’t all show up right now. We have a decade of losing seasons, so people are kind of wait-and-see. But I think all of that will pay off when we make progress, which I think we’re going to.”

SDSU has a 13-month, $40,000 contract with Trilogy PR Group of La Mesa to increase season ticket sales in Aztec sports. SDSU students and alumni have been making the calls Monday through Thursday and have heard from many potential customers that they wanted to “wait and see” how the team fares before considering a purchase, according to the firm. Season tickets have slid 33 percent since 2006, the first season under coach Chuck Long, who was fired in 2008. The Aztecs open the season at home Saturday against Nicholls State of Louisiana.

“I think in two weeks, let’s say the Aztecs are 2-0 in a couple of weeks, now all of a sudden the calls may be received a little different,” said Scott Alevy, a principal of the firm. “People like a winner. People like a bandwagon.”

In a proposed call script, the firm has responses for possible reasons a potential customer might give for not being interested.

A prospect might say, “But there isn’t anyone exciting on this year’s schedule,” according to the proposed script.

In that case, the proposed script says the response from the telemarketer would be: “I know you’ll be excited when you see our alma mater go up against a perennial bowl team like Utah right here in San Diego...”

Alevy said his callers have received “a lot of interest in basketball.” But football is the most expensive sport at SDSU and is supposed to drive revenue growth. Instead, SDSU athletics faces a $1.5 million deficit and endured another round of layoffs this summer. Because of sluggish sales, it has failed to meet ticket sales revenue projections every year since at least 2005. This year, SDSU is making its lowest ticket revenue projection since at least 2005: $1.394 million. Four years ago, SDSU was projecting $3 million in football ticket sales for 2006.